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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145064">once more, with feeling</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_teeth/pseuds/ghost_teeth'>ghost_teeth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Groundhog Day, M/M, Nonbinary Party Poison (Danger Days), Sort Of, Time Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:07:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,304</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_teeth/pseuds/ghost_teeth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Listen: Party Poison has come unstuck in time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fun Ghoul/Party Poison (Danger Days), Jet Star/Party Poison (Danger Days), Kobra Kid &amp; Party Poison (Danger Days)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>once more, with feeling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There are weird in-between times and places—between day and night, city and desert—where things like this are allowed to happen, given the right cocktail of caprice and circumstance, maybe. The dust is still hot underfoot but not for long. It’ll be dark soon. This is the hour of crows and vultures, and there are bones to pick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re beige and bald and nameless now but standing, still standing on their own two bare feet, and that’s got to count for something, dammit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a thing in feathers knocking their ankles insistently with a creaking shopping cart. It hurts. “Get in,” says the Witch. She smells like hot wet pigeons. “Don’t got all day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They think about it. Their ankles ache and their mouth is dry. They hold onto that. “Nah, don’t wanna,” they tell the Witch. “What’s the other option?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Other option? The other option is suck my dick,” says the Witch flatly, and bashes their calves with the cart again. “Get in.”</span>
</p><p>“No.” They tip their chin, ready for a fight, if it comes to that. They’re distantly aware that they’re naked. If they weren’t so shitscared right now, they’d be laughing at the fact that they’re possibly about to fistfight God while their junk is swinging free in the desert breeze. It figures.</p><p>
  <span>The Witch goes still as the moon. The wind sighs among Her feathers, and after a long moment, She sighs with it. “Come here,” She says, and opens Her skinny arms. They stumble forward, and She gathers them up, holds them tight. She’s taller than She looks, or maybe it’s just that Her feet don’t touch the ground, and She tucks their head under Her masked chin. She pets their shorn scalp with cold bandaged fingers and shushes them while they shake against Her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s no such thing as a second chance, you know,” She murmurs into the crown of their head. “There are only the chances you’ve always had.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re making this so unnecessarily stressful,” they whine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Witch traces the trembling line of their shoulder blade. “I know,” She says. “It’s in my nature to fuck with you, just a little bit. Comes with the territory.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pushes something into their hand, something yellow and plastic, and holds them back at arm’s length, looking them over. There are no eyes, but the gaze feels warm. “Better start running,” She says.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now they’re pressed into the wall, head tipped back at a godawful angle, business end of a regulation white zapper in the soft place beneath their jaw. It’s a shit place to start. But in this moment, at least, they can feel their name in their mouth again, with all that it’s ever meant to them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time, Party Poison smiles, bares every sharp little tooth they have and snaps their jaws like an animal, just to hear the noise it makes, just to see the Scarecrow blink. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Korse lights them up anyway, blows them right out of their own skull. For just an instant, they can smell themself cooking. This will not be the last time. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a pathetic little campfire, the kind someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing might manage by sheer luck, and they can tell from the ache behind their eyes that they’ve been up all night keeping it going. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They rub their hands together against the night chill. Their skin is too soft, a little chapped. The boy sleeping at their side is also too soft, also a little chapped. They reach over and touch the boy’s hair. It’s too dark and too short. They’re so young, both of them. They’re nobody for now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The boy snuffles awake and squints up at them through the meager firelight. He says an old dead name, asks what time it is. “Nighttime,” is their shithead reply, and the boy punches their leg sleepily. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can stay up now, if you want,” says the boy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The boy sits up and scrubs sand from his hair with one soft hand. “You can grab a few hours,” he says around a yawn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is the part where they’re supposed to lie down and sleep. They remember that much. They don’t. They sit up with the boy and watch the fire until it goes out. They hold their brother’s hand, and he holds their hand back. They’re so young.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Party’s no good with a needle and thread, never has been. It’s the funniest thing. Yeah, they’re a crack shot, and clever as anything with a can of spray paint, but when it comes to the little fussy close-up shit, they go to pieces. Might as well have mittens on. Party says often and loudly that it’s because they’re a big picture person. Jet Star calls it “getting the yips.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes there just isn’t a steadier hand available. Like right now, when there’s a stream of blood pouring from Jet Star’s head and down his forehead, dripping off the tip of his nose and onto the diner linoleum with a sound like a leaky tap. “Got the yips up there or what?” he says to Party, who is currently losing a battle with the jungle of Jet’s hair in an effort to push the edges of the wound together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut the fuck up or I’ll yip all your fuckin’ hair out,” they mutter, just the way they remember. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Up close, Jet’s hair has that heavy unwashed smell that follows all of them around pretty much always, but if Party really breathes in deep there’s notes of leather, iron, gasoline, cigarette smoke, something sweet and artificial, like kiddie shampoo. It’s so familiar it makes their teeth ache. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, uh. Party? Uh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party’s not exactly sure when their arms found their way around Jet’s neck. They don’t remember burying their face in the mess of his hair. They should let go. They don’t. Can’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Party, ow. Party.” Jet is pawing at Party’s wrists, trying to disengage them, but gently. There’s something fragile about this moment, and somehow they both know it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me,” Party whispers. “Let me just…” They don’t know what they want to do. Maybe they just want to crawl inside Jet’s hair and sleep there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, fuckin’ </span>
  <em>
    <span>ow</span>
  </em>
  <span>, my head—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party jerks back, hands up. “Christ, shit, sorry, sorry, I forgot—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet swivels around on his stool. “What’s—” He grimaces. “Ew, Party. You got it all over you.” He reaches up and rubs his thumb across the bridge of Party’s nose, and it comes away smeared red. The stream of blood from his head wound subdivides his face almost perfectly in half. He squints up at Party. There are still two eyes. “The hell’s up with you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I, uh. It’s, you know.” Party gestures expansively at nothing in particular. “The yips.” They lick their lips and taste copper.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Against the wall, head back, barrel to their chin. Korse smiles like something left out to mummify in the sand. Party Poison closes their eyes and remembers the smell of fire, of shampoo.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s dark—the inside of a truck. There’s a hole rusted into the roof and Party Poison can count the stars even as they come silently over a stranger’s knuckles. They’ve always been loud in everything but this.</p><p>
  <span>The backseat of the truck is small, so the stranger folds Party up like a paper airplane and crushes them close. They don’t remember the guy’s name, they barely remember his face. His hair is peroxide-pale, they recall, done up in braids. They had wanted to touch it, see if it felt as cool as it looked. They wind it around their fingers now, just to ground themself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sounds of a distant bonfire filter in through the truck’s open windows—crackling, whooping, the occasional whine of a zapper as some drunk crash-queen picks a tin can off a fencepost. Get enough ‘Runners together in one place, somebody will always start a fire, and somebody else will have some kind of toxic homebrew to pass around. Spend enough time alone in the desert and you’ll jump at any chance to connect where you can, Party supposes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now the guy is petting their inner thigh in a way that’s entirely too familiar, like this is something the two of them do all the time, like he has some right to get cute with them like this. Party can’t remember if they liked all this cuddly shit the first time they did this. Now, older and sort-of-dead and thrown back into the moment, they’re just getting annoyed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They ask for a cigarette, just to break up the peaceful silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t got any,” the guy says. “I don’t smoke.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sneering, Party wrestles their limbs from the guy’s needy hands and tumbles out of the truck, tucking themself away and zipping up as they stalk back toward the throng around the bonfire. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why this? </span>
  </em>
  <span>they wonder. They have no idea what the significance of this could possibly be, why a sloppy tug in the back of some faceless stranger’s shitbox truck was worth a postmortem. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Maybe it’s all just some kind of roulette-style purgatory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But there’s the Kobra Kid, silhouetted against the fire, blond shag shining gold in the dim light. Party Poison is suddenly, violently homesick. Their lungs feel like cinderblocks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They collide with their brother from behind and wrap their arms around his shoulders like an octopus. They know they probably smell suspicious as hell, but they can’t bring themself to care. “Got a cigarette?” they murmur, but it’s not what they want to say. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“God, ew. Get off, Jesus Christ,” Kobra growls, squirming out of their embrace. “I don’t even want to know where your fuckin’ hands have been.” But he produces a rumpled pack of cigs from somewhere inside his jacket, lights one for each of them. Party wants to hug him again. Instead, they just take the cigarette and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is awful,” says Jet Star, materializing without preamble from the crowd. He’s drinking something brown and sinister-looking out of half a broken jar. “Really just awful shit.” He takes another sip. Somehow, he looks eons younger than the very last time Party saw him. Party Poison wants to grab him and the Kobra Kid in their hands, squeeze both of them in their fists until they’re small enough to stuff into their pockets and keep for later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s early days, Party can tell. There’s just three of them, their acquaintance still new and uneasy. There are at least twenty people around the fire, dancing to the wheezy sound of six different radios, but the three of them might as well be alone.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re drawing technicolor dogs on the exposed cement floor of the diner kitchen. The Girl is handing them a stub of blue crayon, and they’re halfway through thanking her, and then her hands are on their face, little fingers framing their jaw as she studies them with solemn dark eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re… you’re not right,” she says, frowning, and this isn’t how this moment goes, not the way Party remembers it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean, sugar?” Party covers the Girl’s tiny hands with their own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Girl’s thumbs stroke Party’s cheeks thoughtfully. “I don’t know where you came from, but you’re not </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> Party, are you?” She’s staring into their eyes as if there’s something written there only she can read. Maybe there is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party takes a deep breath. “No, I guess not,” they say, and the skin around their eyes feels too tight. “I think I’m just passing through.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” says the Girl. “Where ya going?” She lets go of their face and turns her attention back to the dog she’s coloring green.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know,” Party says. They touch her hair, her skinny shoulders, and maybe they’re crying. It’s hard to tell. “Love you, sugar,” they say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Love you,” says the Girl. She doesn’t look up, but she’s smiling. “Good luck.”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The boy who will be Fun Ghoul is face-down in the dust, twisting like a weasel to dislodge Party’s kneecaps from his kidneys. He’s snarling </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck off</span>
  </em>
  <span> over and over, rhythmic, a little like praying. He’s too young for the scabby wavehead skin he’s developing, and Party Poison has just spotted him wasting away in a lawnchair along an empty desert road and decided on a whim that they’re going to save his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t even know you, man,” the boy who isn’t Fun Ghoul yet moans. He’s starting to cry, big hacking junkie sobs. “The fuck you want? The fuck you want from me?” He smells like overdone Spam.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’ll tell Party Poison later, after his skin has healed and he’s got his name, that being tackled like this with his flesh still half-cooked was like getting fucked by the sun. He’ll spend the next two years covering the burn scars up with tattoos.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party hauls the boy up by his elbows, pushes their chin into the space just below his ear. “We’re all gonna take care of each other,” they murmur, just loud enough for the boy to hear. “I love you. I miss you.” Later, Fun Ghoul won’t remember this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet and Kobra help them frog-march the screaming junkie to the Trans Am and bundle him into the backseat, leaving the lawnchair behind with bits of fried flesh still clinging to it. It’ll take a week for the boy to detox, another for the burns to stop oozing, another to convince him to live, another to get him to smile. In a month, they’ll help him assemble his real name from magazine cuttings he picks blind out of Kobra’s helmet.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wall, zapper, death’s-head grin. Party Poison laughs so hard it’s more like screaming.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s all over now, all quiet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The white rubber mask reeks of trapped frightened things and through the eyeholes they’re looking at the wreckage of a face that maybe used to be Party Poison. This seems like it ought to be against the rules, jumping into another body, but maybe this one was just empty enough for them to fit inside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re not in control of these hands. The hands are pulling the dead thing up by its pillarbox-red hair like a turnip from a garden. The dead thing’s eyes are still open, muddy with burst capillaries. There’s brain matter running out its nose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All they can do is watch. The hands are stripping the body of its boots, its blue jacket, taking a knife to the red hair, sawing it away from the scalp, killing all the colors. The dead beige thing is tossed outside the city walls with three other dead pillaged things, left in the sun to bleach. All the while, they wonder if all Draculoids are always screaming inside the masks like they are now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then all at once they’re looking up at the toxic cloudless sky from their back, dead in the dust again. The Witch is there, of course, leaning over them like a kid checking out some roadkill.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was mean,” they mumble through their dead dry lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” says the Witch. “But you’re fucking it all up and I’m starting to get bored.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry. I’m trying. I don’t get it yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Witch cocks Her head like a crow. “Try harder,” She says.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s pushing seven feet tall, brawny and all neon pink. She told them her name but they can’t really remember it. Maybe it was Kitty something. They’re too tired to hear things like names right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s got them and their nameless little brother bundled up in the oversized sidecar of her clunky old motorcycle, said she’d take them as far as the nearest bolt-hole she knows. She’s the very first real-deal Zonerunner they’ve ever met. The kid who will be Party Poison has never seen anyone like her before, never thought someone like her could exist. Something in them sings to something in her, they know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s an old gas station, all faded blue. She pulls the planks nailed across the front doors off with her bare hands and leads them inside, one hand at her hip holster just in case. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I ain’t gonna stay,” she says once she’s sure the place is clear, once the kids are settled into a corner with a couple old jackets to huddle beneath and a can of beans to share. “But maybe I’ll see you out there sometime, motorbabies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a scrap of an old receipt on the floor. They pick it up, lick their lips and rasp, “Do you have something I could write with?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The neon pink ‘Runner tips her head. Her mask has a red clown nose. “Uh, yeah, I guess,” she says, and rummages around in one of her many vest pockets. She comes up with a little stub of charcoal and hands it over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks.” They tear the receipt carefully in half and write something terribly, terribly selfish on it. They hold out the half they’ve written on to the ‘Runner whose name might be Kitty, might not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s this for?” Through the eyeholes of her mask, they can see her squinting, puzzled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s for later,” says Party Poison. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After Kitty is long gone, they write the same selfish thing on the other half of the paper and leave it out on a crumbling counter, where someone might see it. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Another gas station, the bathroom this time. The door hangs from its hinges at a crazy angle. They’re naked to the waist, something close to clean, pouring precious water out of a bottle in dibs and dabs, just enough to rinse their hair. There’s red dye dripping down their elbows and soaking into the waistband of their jeans, and Fun Ghoul is leaning in the doorway, watching, silent. They don’t know how long he’s been there. Maybe the whole time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They watch their reflection wink at him in the filthy mirror. “No such thing as a free show, honey. Pay your nickel or get out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Was just gonna tell ya you missed a spot in the back,” says Ghoul, face curiously flat. His name is still shiny and new, and the first of his tattoos is just healing on his shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is the part where they’re supposed to flick a handful of hair dye at him and ruin the only clean-ish shirt he owns. He’ll spend the next year insisting they owe him a new one. Maybe it’s that homesickness again that compels them to hold the half-full jug of cloudy water out to Ghoul instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why don’t you get it for me.” They hardly recognize their own voice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fun Ghoul crosses the bathroom carefully, like the floor might give way at any second. He spins them back around toward the mirror and grabs the back of their neck, gently presses them down toward the ground. “Can’t reach,” he mumbles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party takes a knee, eyes level with the sink. This seems excessive. They’re not that much taller. They can hear themself breathing—why is it so loud? Ghoul tips a bit of the water onto their head and his fingers are in their hair, too gentle and shaky to actually be useful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” Party says to the sink basin. Their throat hurts. The back of their neck is cold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, sure,” says Ghoul. His fingers are still. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither of them move for a long time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Ghoul is finally gone without so much as an explanation or an excuse, Party uses the dye still left on their hands to write that same selfish something on the mirror. They won’t be back here, but maybe someone else will.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Girl hands them a red stump of crayon. “Oh, you’re back,” she says. They’re drawing birds today. She’s taller than she was last time, hair a little longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” says Party. They draw an egg and make it a penguin. “Sure am happy to see you, sugar.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She smiles up at them, and although it’s small and without teeth, it’s blinding. “You ever figure out where you’re going?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party thinks about it. They don’t know what color penguins were. They figure this one might as well be pink. They grab the pink from the pile of crayons. “I think I’m always gonna be going to the same place,” they reply. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That sounds shitty,” says the Girl. She’s drawing thirty bluebirds with purple beaks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess, yeah,” says Party. “But I think maybe I can change how I get there.”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Of all the moments they get to revisit, they never get to go back to that firefight on Route Guano. They figure that there are just some things that have to say the same, that maybe this is the axle on which the whole pinwheel spins. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’ve got their face buried in Jet Star’s hair, carefully avoiding his scalp wound, and they think their face isn’t wet with blood this time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Promise me something?” Party whispers, and presses a kiss into the back of Jet’s skull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jet swallows audibly. “Uh, okay. Sure. What?” His voice has never sounded so unsteady.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party breathes in the unpretty, vital, dirty-hair, dirty-life smell of Jet Star and laughs shakily on the exhale. “I don’t know. Lemme think of something for you to promise me. Promise me a promise for later, okay?” Their arms feel like they’ve gone rigor-mortis around Jet’s neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, Jet’s hands creep up to rest on Party’s wrists—not pulling them away, just holding. “Okay,” he says. “I promise you a promise for later.”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Back of the truck again. A stranger is jerking Party off and his breath is hot in their ear. They’re looking at the stars through the roof and they’re either sweating profusely or crying again. Distantly, they wonder if now they’re going to be remembered as that jackass who randomly burst into tears all the time</p><p>
  <span>The guy wipes his hand off on his own jeans instead of Party’s and they’ve never noticed that before. It strikes them as neighborly. They let him gather them up and hold them for maybe a moment longer than they might have otherwise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wanna grab something,” they tell the guy, and slap his knee gently. “Can you wait here for like a second?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without waiting for an answer, they clamber out of the truck and jog back toward the crowd, only barely remembering to zip up before they step into the firelight. They sock Kobra in the meat of his upper arm. “Hey, lemme see your cigarettes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just see ‘em or have one? You can look with your eyes, not your hands,” says Kobra snottily, but Party’s already going for his jacket, rummaging around in its inside pocket while Kobra squawks indignantly. They find what they’re looking for, dump all of the cigarettes out into the palm of their hand and stuff them back into Kobra’s pocket, keeping only the package.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks mucho,” they sing, ducking to headbutt Kobra’s shoulder affectionately before dancing out of reach so he can’t swat them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They jog back to the truck where the guy is still sitting, looking bemused and disoriented. There’s an inch-long golf pencil in their hand and they’re already scribbling on the inside of the torn cigarette package. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here.” They lean in through one of the busted windows to push the cigarette package with its selfish little message into the guy’s hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it?” the guy squints at it in the dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s for later.”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re twelve or thirteen, can’t really remember, and this is the first can of spraypaint they’ve ever held. It’s beer-bottle green. They’re going to paint a really shitty wolf on this old convenience store wall, but first they get down real low, close to the ground, and they write something small enough to be overlooked, big enough to be seen by those who might know how to look.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s hard to say what precipitates nights like this. Party would say it’s something in the weather, if the weather ever actually changed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It always starts with just one of them—usually the Girl, sometimes Kobra if it’s a really weird night. This time it’s both, Kobra with the Girl on his hip standing at the foot of Party’s grubby twin mattress, both looking red-eyed and a little crazy. Party doesn’t say a word, just shifts as close to the wall as they possibly can. Kobra lays the girl down next to them, then squeezes in and curls around both of them like a monstrous shrimp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This kind of crazy is magnetic, Party supposes, because suddenly Fun Ghoul and Jet Star are there, and they’re a mess of unwashed limbs and leather. They all don’t fit. Party is stuck in the space between the mattress and the wall, the girl wedged under their armpit. Kobra’s arm is stretched over both of them, uncomfortably heavy across Party’s throat, fingers tangled in their hair. Jet’s head is pillowed on their hipbone, and Ghoul is stretched the wrong way across all of them, like the middle bar of an H. It’s stupid. Nobody’s going to get any sleep like this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party lays there under the hot stinking heap of bodies, and realizes they can pick out which breaths belong to who without really trying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They wonder what purpose revisiting this moment could possibly serve. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s just the Witch’s idea of a consolation prize.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now they’re sixteen, seventeen, red-haired and newly named and toughening up like leather in the sun. They hoard markers and paint, and whenever nobody’s looking they write their selfish little message in bathroom stalls, on cars that don’t belong to them, on unattended jackets, on empty cans, in the palms of anyone who gets close enough to let them. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re past remembering how old they are. There’s something scrawled across the Doc’s van that apparently wasn’t there the night before. Nobody’s taking credit, though it’s a pretty audacious move. None of them recognize the tag. “Dunno what it means,” says Pony, and scratches at the paint with one ragged purple thumbnail. It’s not proper spray paint—most likely just bits of old magazines dissolved in alcohol, already flaking in the hot sun. “You’d think if someone was going to tag D’s van they’d take the time to write something worthwhile.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party recognizes the message, though they don’t say so. What they don’t recognize is the handwriting. Something warm sings through their veins that has nothing to do with the desert heat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it a threat, do you think?” Cherri Cola’s fingers are on his pink mask, slung around his neck. “Like, should we be worried?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno, doesn’t feel like it,” says Pony, drumming the front brake of their skates on the hard-packed sand thoughtfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t like it,” says Cherri.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party shrugs. “Maybe it’ll mean something later,” they say. Pony slides them a weird sideways look, but doesn’t say anything.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s middle of the night, the night before, and this time Party Poison drifts around the dark diner collecting Killjoys like some kind of weird tooth fairy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They haul Jet Star out of the deep recesses of the kitchen, pry Fun Ghoul out of the diner booth he’s crammed himself into like a barnacle, pluck the cigarette from the Kobra Kid’s lips and gently pull him back inside. Party Poison leads them all in a duckling line to the nasty twin mattress and lays them down one by one. Not one of them protests. Party takes the uncomfortable spot in between the mattress and the wall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s an empty place in the very middle of the mattress, small and too large all at once, and all four of them curl around it like quotation marks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party stretches their left arm out as far as they can, tries to hold all three of them at once (four—the middle is still her spot), wishes their arms were longer. Ghoul’s greasy hair is getting in their mouth and Kobra is trembling so hard the entire bed is shaking, or maybe it’s Jet. Party Poison lays there in the dark and loves them all so hard they think they might turn inside-out and explode. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Early in the morning now, years before, and there’s a tiny baby girl they’re all afraid of sleeping in a cardboard box full of pillows in the kitchen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra’s more cat than snake, likes to climb up high when he needs to feel safe. Party knows he’ll be on the roof before they even go looking for him. They pop up out of the trapdoor like a Whack-a-Mole, just to freak him out a little bit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You sleep at all?” They reach out, and Kobra gives them a hand up the last bit of the rickety ladder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, sort of. Well. No. You?” Kobra nudges the door shut with the steel toe of his boot. He looks so pale he’s almost blue in the early morning light and he reeks of hours spent chain-smoking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party takes a half-smoked cigarette from Kobra’s fingers, takes a drag, passes it back. “Nah, too busy panicking. Should be against the law, being that small,” they mutter. “Ain’t natural.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They pass the cigarette back and forth in silence for a little while before Kobra asks, “I was never that small, was I? Can’t have been. D’you remember?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, Party doesn’t remember. Maybe there’s something stowed away in the deepest most uncharted corners of their mental crawlspace, some little remnant of Before buried in the white haze, but it’s not worth digging for. “Yeah, no, you were actually smaller,” they lie instead, grinning their craziest all-teeth grin. Their face feels like it might tear in half. “You actually fit in a goldfish bowl so that’s where we kept you. Just sprinkled some food in sometimes, when we remembered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘We’?” Kobra flicks their forehead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, me and the wolves. You know, the ones that raised us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra huffs, almost a laugh. “Oh yeah, how could I forget. The ones who taught you how to use a fork and aim when you piss.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Exactly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m worried I might like, forget where she is and step on her and break her,” Kobra blurts. He’s lighting a new cigarette with unsteady fingers and he can’t get the match to strike. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party takes the cigarette and the little matchbook and does it for him. “Nah, I bet she ends up loving you the best,” they say, sticking the lit cig between Kobra’s lips. “I bet when she gets scared or has a nightmare or whatever, you’re the one she crawls into bed with. I bet you’re the one that teaches her to read. I bet you’re the one she uses as base whenever she plays tag. I bet you’re the one she wants to be when she grows up.” It’s all true. Just hasn’t happened yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kobra is giving them the weirdest, longest look. “The shit you say sometimes,” he says, and shakes his head. In the glow of what’s left of the diner’s neon sign, his ears have gone faintly pink.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jet and Kobra are manhandling the shrieking junkie into the back of the Trans-Am, and Party Poison is busy writing something on a torn-off scrap of old magazine. They jog back to the lawnchair, sticky with cooked wavehead scabs, and leave the folded-up note on the seat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hell was that about?” Kobra mutters as Party slides into the driver’s seat. One of the boy who will be Fun Ghoul’s fists caught him in the left eye and it’s already swelling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just wanted to make sure we didn’t leave any important bits of him behind,” they reply airily.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wall, zapper, head back, grinning skull-face. Party Poison smiles back because they know the punchline now and they’re gonna be the one to deliver it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We ain’t doing this again,” they say, and Korse blows them away.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>This time, it’s Fun Ghoul in the bathroom, facing the mirror, and Party Poison leaning in the doorway, watching.</p><p>
  <span>“Fun Ghoul,” Fun Ghoul is whispering to his reflection. “Fun Ghoul.” The name is two hours old, and his bare arms are mottled with scars.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fun Ghoul,” says Party Poison from the doorway, and Ghoul startles, hand going to the switchblade he keeps in his jeans pocket. Party puts their hands up and approaches slowly, tiptoeing like they might wake up something terrible. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, Fun Ghoul,” says Party, and takes Fun Ghoul by the shoulders to turn him back toward the mirror. Their arms insinuate themselves around his waist and hold him carefully, like his guts might come spilling out if they don’t hold them in for him. “Fun Ghoul,” they murmur into his ear. “Fun Ghoul.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fun Ghoul,” he repeats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They sway in front of the mirror together almost like dancing, repeating the brand new name together, filling the air with it, letting it accumulate like dust on its new owner’s skin.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a sequence of numbers, three words. No one knows when everyone first started writing it on everything or what it means just yet, but there’s a collective tacit agreement that it’s a bomb that’s starting to tick louder with every passing year. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>—</span>
  <em>
    <span>another glorious sunny day in the Zones, just like yesterday and the day before that and the day before that ad infinitum etcetera, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Dr. Death Defying is crooning from the clunky little radio in the Girl’ lap. It’s New Years Day and they’re all spooning dog food out of cans in celebration. </span>
  <em>
    <span>In half a shake we’ve got Bo Diddley by way of The Woolies, but on the first day of this newest of years let’s take a moment to take note of some digits and make sure our watches are set. Eleven months, twenty-two days, eight hours and eighteen minutes, by mine. Ain’t no way to tell what’s at the end of that rainbow, but sometimes you just gotta follow it. Anyway, enough out of me, here’s the Woolies.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The Woolies go, </span>
  <em>
    <span>WEEE-EEEELLLLLLL, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and Fun Ghoul scoffs. “Don’t mean nothing,” he says, reaching over to turn the music up. </span>
</p><p>Jet Star is rubbing at something scratched into the diner counter’s surface with his thumb—a sequence of numbers, three words. “How come you write it all over everything like everyone else, then?”</p><p>
  <span>Fun Ghoul shrugs, drumming along with the music on the counter. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I got a graveyard head, I got a tombstone mind, yeah I’m just twenty-one and I don’t mind dyin’. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“It’s just, you know, a thing,” he says. “Like how some people draw dicks all over everything they can. Don’t mean nothing, it’s just a tag.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Girl, sitting at Party’s side, is using a box cutter to scratch something into the countertop, tongue poking out between her lips. “Don’t mean nothing,” she says, and looks up at them knowingly. “Right, Party?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The radio says, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Who do you love? Who do you love? </span>
  </em>
  <span>The countertop says, </span>
  <em>
    <span>112219 2137 ALL TOGETHER NOW.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Probably nothing,” Party agrees.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They don’t know where they are. Nowhere, maybe. It’s all just sand, and the Witch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Interesting play,” She says. She’s holding them again, petting their red, red hair. Her skinny arms are hard like iron, hot like radiation. Her feathers tickle their nose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Guess we’ll see how this pans out,” says the Witch. “Either I’ll see you again soon or I won’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party Poison frowns into the Witch’s feathers. “Don’t you, like, know everything, though?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Witch’s feathers rustle like they’re caught in a breeze, and Party realizes She’s laughing. “Where’s the fun in that?” She says.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ever think of something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s late, or maybe early. The stars out here are the color of an industrial accident. Party’s reclined on the hood of the Trans Am with Jet Star settled between their legs, his back to their front, his head resting on their collarbones. Party spits out a mouthful of Jet’s hair so they can take a swig from the filthy bottle they’ve been passing back and forth. “What? Think of what?” They hand the bottle back to Jet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I promised you a promise for later,” Jet Star says, and the words trip over themselves. He’s drunk, a little bit. They both are. “While ago. Whatcha want me to promise you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Party thinks about it. “Want you to ask me again later,” they say. “And then when we get to later, I want you to ask me again later than that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s a lot of later,” says Jet Star.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, that’s the point, honey,” says Party Poison.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s 9:37 p.m. on November 22, 2019. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Trans Am is idling at the mouth of the tunnel that will take it into the heart of Battery City. The roof is down and they’re all standing up on the seats, looking back. Behind them, it looks like the desert has burst into bloom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a menagerie of prettied-up old beaters, repurposed dracmobiles, bikes with eye-searing paintjobs. There are many more on foot, masks glittering like a plague of butterflies, boots tight. In the glare of innumerable headlights, Party Poison sees a van with a bullseye satellite driven by a pink-masked boy, a shitbox truck with a rusted roof through which someone might see the stars. There’s a clunker of an ancient bike with an oversized sidecar and a pink-haired giant astride it (maybe a little more gray than pink now). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite the numbers, it’s bone-silent out here. They’re waiting, all of them, and ready. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somewhere inside the city walls, a little girl is waiting for them. Party Poison pulls their mask down over their eyes. When they say, “All together now,” they know it’s somehow loud enough to carry to every ear in the crowd. For a moment, they think they might see a shadow of black feathers darting just out of sight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They swing down into the driver’s seat. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading, buds. </p><p>@flamingo_tooth on twitter, everyoneissquidwardinpurgatory on tumblr</p></blockquote></div></div>
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